CoinsCrap: savings through residual income

In a world in which most of the cash exchanges we do every day are not physical, it would not make sense for our digital piggy bank to be so. CoinsCrapis simply our piggy on the phone. The app keeps the digital cash that we have left over after each payment, so that we meet our savings goals that we want to reach. As with the left over cash that our mother allowed us to keep when we were kids and ran around for errands.

Pantalla de Coinscrap.

“The idea was born when I saw my mother-in-law, who put all the coins she had in a water bottle,” says the CEO of CoinsCrap Finance S.L., the Ourense David Conde, whom we already met via another financial management application, Senseitrade. “We wanted to combine financial planning with the rounding up of numbers, so that people could make their dreams come true”.

For David Conde, the main objective of this product is to democratize savings among millennials, with an easy and fun process. And above all, it is not a hassle.

The on-line-registration-takes about 2 minutes. And start filling out our virtual piggy bank too. We choose how much our next acquisition costs, kick or need, how long we expect to arrive at the amount it costs, and the amount of money to round up for each operation: one, two, five or ten euros. If the cinema costs us 6.50 and we have rounded it up to € 1, CoinsCrap withdraws 50 cents from our account and puts them in our piggy bank.

We can also make a fixed monthly contribution, because it does not always arrive with the left over cash. “We did a pilot program in Portugal, and the average savings of users every week, only with rounding, was between 12 and 15 euros.Those cents come out of card transactions and bank receipts”.

The virtual piggy bank is an insurance of savings of Caser, that although it offers us very low profitability, from 50 € we can withdraw everything what we have saved, without any cost. “We have chosen this type of product because it is the fastest format to register. It is enough with filling out a form and send a copy of your photo ID card “.

In the current phase of the application we can only deposit the money in savings insurance; however, in CoinsCrap they have been implementing other options. Some of them we can see them already in the home screen, even if they are not operational. As an equity investment fund in the short term, which provides higher returns than savings insurance. And also a retirement fund. CoinsCrap will calculate the monthly savings that the user should make in order to cash in for his pension in the future. Although they make it clear that it is very difficult to know how much we will charge when we retire, it will rely on the future financial situation and what we have contributed to the system in our lifetime.

Many Galician companies have found through innovation a perfect tool to challenge the current global economic crisis. (I+E) Innovar para Emprender —Innovate to Learn in Spanish— is a new series of jornalistic reports integrated in the scientific culture, technology and part of the FECYT. The project has the full financial and logistic back up of the Axencia Galega de Innovación—The Innovation Galician Agency.